Courtney McClelland

Courtney McClelland’s bodies emerge through a process of excavation as she paints, digging out their limbs, rendering their curves, and reassembling their bodily forms to build her compositions. Each work begins with layers of acrylic stain before unearthing bodily forms from the traces left by washes and pigment. Developing her paintings through a combination of fluid acrylic washes and thick, textural oil paint, McClelland tempers her bold, gestural mark-making at the edges, arriving at a result that appears gentle and soft. The figures that emerge are supplemented with references to the Baroque painters, Victorian-era fairies, and Bacchanalian scenes; their rituals, brawls, hedonistic revelry, and languorous splendour kindle a sense of undulating movement across the canvas.